Gethsemane
by demonegg
Summary: Walking through the church doors, he never expected to see his life doubly crushed upon the grassy floor.


The concept for this comes from LJ (via wonderful pieces by both Fairheartstrife and Alialka); however, rather than have every sentence describe a different scene, each one actually describes (either physically or abstractly) the moment in AC/ACC where Cloud finds Tifa in the church. I probably did this wrong, but all my attempts to have different scenes ended up being mundane or AU, so I decided to modify the challenge. I hope it's not too redundant.

And as always, I don't own FFVII, and thanks for reading.

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1. **Silence**

Upon the caesura in the wooden creaking, his world ends.

2. **Talent**

These are the bonds that are sacred: love, family, friends; and he has pretty much screwed up them all.

3. **Search**

It's his selfish, unquenchable desire to be found that got her hurt: had he hidden better, run further, he would be the only one on the verge of pushing up daisies.

4. **Ice**

His body rushes to her side, but his soul freezes upon the unvoiced reply to calling her name.

5. **Journey**

Theirs is an antipodal relationship: he fights only to die, and he leaves her to save her from nothing but himself.

6. **Hurricane**

One mangled spirit cries to another, "SOS! SOS!"

7. **Highway**

There have been signs on the road signaling, 'Closed for Repairs,' and he wonders if they sell those for private use.

8. **Unknown**

Who, what, where, when, how are all such stupid questions when he asks himself why he can never help those who depend on him.

9. **View**

Along with his petrified breath, coagulated blood, heart cemented shut, a single tear lingers long enough to assess the damage, but even it can't pretend that it's okay to be late.

10. **Dream**

She wanted him to be her hero once, but surely she'll rescind her offer at this third strike and he's out.

11. **Body**

Her pulse, breath, movement: all present, check; his: slowing, slowing...stopped?

12. **Breathe**

It only takes a puff of air, an impotent curse, for him to find himself plunged into darkness.

13. **Luck**

It would be ironic, if it weren't so tragic, how he's always the last one to the show.

14. **Eclipse**

Eyelids dropping, he thinks it's safer not to look directly at the sun when his own time is setting.

15. **Cold**

Her hands are chilled like the mountain air, or frozen like a group of silver-haired men condensed with the purpose to put them all on ice.

16. **Overwhelmed**

Blood, blood, there has never been enough blood, not long ago when his friends died, or now when he lies with her on the precipice of demise.

17. **World**

The planet has always championed life (just not his, or hers, or anybody's that truly mattered).

18. **Lies**

The assurance that life would be different, better this time because she was with him degrades into a bitter lie when he leaves and finds her broken on the floor.

19. **Wings**

Dusty memories floated in mako and pain and the grip of her hand on his, remind him now as the pressure drops, of the times when with her he felt like soaring.

20. **Red**

Red: the color of life on a sword run through a onetime companion; black: the color he bleeds when he feels like he's been stabbed through the heart.

21. **Fever**

Rage burns inside him at the cost exacted by the planet: his life, hers, and the lives of two children whose only crime was looking to the wrong savior.

22. **Silk**

He prefers her calloused hands to the leaves crushed against his cheek, but he supposes beggars can't be choosers.

23. **Fall**

He kneels upon the hassock of the dismembered petals of 'He loves her, he saves her not.'

24. **Sacred**

Figure immolated upon the dusty ground; so much of life depends on death.

25. **Mask**

Dirt on her cheek, blood on her face, shadowed bruises on his arm, they all hide the triumphant heroes' fate in which he never could quite believe.

26. **Wait**

They lie here in unconscious memory of their promise (may it rest in peace).

27. **Talk**

Two words whispered against his hand told him everything, most of all that she was alive and foolishly waiting for him.

28. **Ring**

He's branded her with his guilt, his promises: a mountain of unholy lies circumscribing her finger with the same silvered sign like a stake through his own heart.

29. **Box**

He's been slogging it out in the pits of despair, but he realizes how precarious it all is when the bottom falls out from underneath him and her arms aren't there to catch him when he hits the ground.

30. **Run**

And when he loses the race and collapses in a heap with the prize he didn't win in his arms, he thinks somehow he's still running.

31. **Hero**

He has saved the planet for his friends, a promise, a memory, but now his selfishness is costing them both.

32. **Gravity**

Liquid seeping down his arm: the pain, the guilt, the weakness at the touch of the long-fingered hand of failure; and he lets go.

33. **Candle**

Had she not given him herself, her life wouldn't be flickering before his eyes, and he with it.

34. **Forgotten**

They both know his problem comes not from having forgotten his family and friends, but rather quite the opposite.

35. **Whisper**

They have always been about what wasn't said, she: I forgive you, he: you're still hurt.

36. **Drink**

She's a bartender, doling out spirits for the down-and-out and taking his punishment so that this cup may pass him by--a little too late.

37. **Midnight**

Hush, his mother used to say to him, dreams can't hurt you when you're awake (oh, but they can, they can).

38. **Temptation**

That's what men do, they tell their girls that they love them when it matters most, but she already knows and he can't say it when it's probably for the best if she learns to let him go.

39. **Cover**

The blood on her gloves tell her story, but they speak nothing of the times they added a little more salt to a pot, or cleaned skinned knees, or dug nails into his back and drowned fingers in his hair when the nights were far too short for either of their likings.

40. **Strength**

Pews broken, columns smashed, and all he could think of was how shallow her breath was against his touch.

41. **Promise**

He thinks her hero didn't get the memo to come and save her whenever she's in trouble because the danger has passed and their bodies arc to the ground, tracing the path of a distant falling star.

42. **Music**

Anxious to see her, love her, save her, but denying himself them all, his heart palpitates diminuendo.

43. **Memory**

How many times would she say those two words, how many times would he come too late to catch her when she falls?

44. **Formal**

Boy meets girl; boy leaves girl; boy comes back to girl; girl finds boy and together they save the world; but then the boy leaves again and when the heroes are all out of luck, who will swoop in for the save?

45. **Dance**

He runs to her side through a whirling dervish of petals yellow and white, but her last partner has left her maliciously breathless.

46. **Laugh**

The breeze through the rafters teases his hair, as if he has the right to be destined for the same intangible fate.

47. **Hope**

To sum it up in a word: Damn (damned).

48. **Farewells**

The nights were the hardest with the fragmented dreams of his life with her, but he prefers the harsh pang of longing to the actualized reality of his nightmares.

49. **Fire**

Once his eyes burned in anger and hate at a death, but now they threaten to drown in her silence and his pain.

50. **Forever**

He remembers how many times he has reached for her: at a bridge, a reactor, the lifestream, the end of the world; and now he reaches in a last-ditch effort to show her he's there.


End file.
